“WE “BEN” OVER BACKWARDS TO MAKE DEAL!”

9/29/09

This morning’s (i.e., Tuesday, 9/29’s) Wall Street Journal reports on page A4 that stockbroker and “financial planner” Frank Bluestein, whose business was apparently domiciled in Pontiac, Michigan, has been accused by the SEC of persuading more than 800 investors, many of them elderly, to invest in a Ponzi scheme. Mr. Bluestein’s “brokerage” was known as “Fast Frank, Inc.”

If these allegations are true, Mr. Bluestein’s conduct was despicable and reprehensible, especially when one considers that many of his clients would not by any definition be considered “financially sophisticated” (unlike Bernie Madoff’s “victims”) and that, in order to increase the size of his “clients” investments, “financial planner” Mr. Bluestein urged them to refinance their mortgages, insuring their actual or figurative bankruptcy. This case is further illustration of a point I repeatedly make to my students, friends, and anyone who will listen: Anyone can call himself or herself a “financial planner.” While there are many good financial consultants, planners, etc., out there, assume anyone who brandishes the title of “financial consultant,” “financial planner,” etc., is a thief, a mountebank, and a knave until you accumulate substantial evidence to the contrary.

In furtherance of the above, I ask the “victims” of Mr. Bluestein’s alleged felonious finagling one question:

You deal with a broker called “Fast Frank” and you are surprised when he absconds with your money?

Oh, yes, the future looks bright indeed.